


Always the last place you look

by alchemicink



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alcohol, Friendship, Gen, Harry-centric, Humor, cameos from Seven and Naomi and Neelix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemicink/pseuds/alchemicink
Summary: Tom loses something important. (It’s notthatimportant) B’Elanna plans a heist. (It’s less elaborate than intended) And Harry is incapable of saying no. (Well, hecan, but he won’t)





	Always the last place you look

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akikaze13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akikaze13/gifts).



> This fic was a lot of fun to put together. When I got this assignment, I saw "Harry and Tom and B'Elanna get up to some mischief" in the suggested prompts, and came up with this weird idea. Though they're really causing mischief more to themselves than anyone else tbh... Anyway, this fic isn't meant to be set during any particular part of the series, though I think it'd fit best somewhere during season 5 maybe? 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Jefferies tubes were not made for three people to occupy all at once. It was two people, max, and even that was pushing the limits of common decency. Harry is painful aware of this fact as he shifts his position and accidentally kicks B’Elanna in her shin. She shoots him a glare that might make the warp core breach just from sheer terror. Tom, seemingly oblivious to the uncomfortable positions imposed by the too-narrow space, accidently shoves his shoulder into Harry’s neck. 

“Is there a reason we couldn’t just meet in the mess hall for this?” B’Elanna asks, looking to Tom for answers. 

Harry wonders the same thing. When Tom had approached him at the end of his duty shift earlier and said he had something important to discuss, this isn’t exactly what Harry had pictured. Just three senior officers hiding out in a Jefferies tube like they were children who’d just broken a vase and wanted to escape parental wrath for as long as possible. 

Not that they hadn’t been in weirder situations, of course. But Harry isn’t aware of any current hostile invasion of the ship. At the moment, at least. (That had happened last week. By Harry’s calculations they probably had a few more weeks before something majorly catastrophic happened again. He had intended to enjoy the lull in the action by practicing a few new songs on his clarinet. Something in his gut told him those plans wouldn’t be working out…) 

Tom sighs dramatically like he does when Harry accidentally breaks character during one of their Captain Proton sessions. B’Elanna not-so-subtly elbows him in the ribs as encouragement to finally tell them why he called them to this meeting in the first place. 

“I need your help for something top secret,” Tom answers. “I trust you two more than anyone else on this ship, so you’re the only ones who can help.” 

“What did you break?” B’Elanna demands. 

Tom throws his hands up, narrowing avoiding poking both of them in their eyes. “I didn’t break anything! It’s nothing like that.” He takes a deep breath before he speaks again. “The truth is, I lost something important and I need to get it back.” 

B’Elanna looks unimpressed, but Harry decides to give him a chance to explain. 

“What was it?” he asks, ignoring the ache beginning to form in his thighs and lower back due to the cramped space of the Jefferies tube. He’s hoping Tom has a truly fantastic explanation for why they couldn’t have discussed this somewhere a bit more… open. 

“So I’ve had this bottle of Ktarian wine that I replicated years ago to save for a special occasion,” Tom begins. “And two days ago, I… may or may not have lost it in a poker game with Neelix, and I need some help getting it back.” He finishes his explanation, embarrassed, and tries to look anywhere other than at Harry and B’Elanna, which is quite difficult considering they’re still taking up all the space in the Jefferies tube. 

“You called us all the way out here for _that_?” B’Elanna rolls her eyes. 

“Can’t you just replicate another bottle?” Harry asks. 

Tom shakes his head. “No, I’ve been letting it age to perfection for the past few years. If I replicate a new bottle, I have to start all over again. I can’t waste all that hard work.” 

“What hard work?” B’Elanna scoffs. “It’s _synthehol_. It doesn’t age at all.” 

Tom pointedly ignores B’Elanna’s argument and quickly asks if they’ll help him. He’s got that look on his face, the one where he widens his eyes to make himself seem more innocent (even though he clearly is the one to blame for this whole situation by somehow deciding it was a good idea to play any sort of betting game with Neelix). He pulls his mouth into a sad frown the longer they wait to answer his request, doing his best impression of a kicked puppy. 

Harry thinks Tom could have had a career in acting if Starfleet hadn’t worked out. 

“We can plot a heist to get it back,” Tom adds, raising his eyebrows as he attempts to entice B’Elanna with this suggestion. “Like in that movie we watched last week.” 

All the annoyance disappears from B’Elanna’s features as she considers this new bit of information. She actually brightens up quite a bit. Harry stares at both of them in concern. He is 100 percent positive he isn’t going to like where this is going. 

“Alright, we’ll do it,” B’Elanna nods. “I’ll have a plan for you by 2100 hours.” 

With that settled, they both turn their attention to Harry. Suddenly the Jefferies tube seems ten times smaller which kinda feels _impossible_ because Harry had already been feeling slightly claustrophobic before his two best friends started staring at him with all the intensity of a supernova. 

“Okay, okay,” Harry sighs reluctantly. “I’ll help you find your dumb bottle of wine too.”

Tom claps him on the shoulder, positively beaming. “Supportive friends are the best friends!” 

*** 

As it turns out, B’Elanna’s heist plan is pretty basic though Harry wisely refrains from pointing that out when they meet later to discuss it. Actually, her original plan had been so needlessly complicated that even Tom had shot it down. (Though perhaps that was because her first plan required Tom to get food poisoning and vomit several times for authenticity. After evacuating the mess hall, B’Elanna and Harry would have donned hazmat suits to inspect the contents of Neelix’s kitchen for the culprit and hopefully discovered the missing bottle of wine along the way.)

Harry personally is glad they moved on to the simpler plan. Setting aside all the millions of things that could go terribly wrong with that idea, hazmat suits _chafe_. 

“Okay, what’s the signal again?” B’Elanna quizzes Tom while they make their way towards the mess hall. 

“I crow like a rooster,” Tom answers automatically with a joke. 

B’Elanna glares.

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding. If someone comes, I tell them I’m out here pacing because I can’t sleep,” he answers dutifully this time. “And then I make a bunch of small talk to distract them.”

“And what do we do?” B’Elanna turns to Harry. 

“We hightail it out of the mess hall faster than the Doctor can say ‘please state the nature of the medical emergency.’” He’s answered this question five times already on the walk here.

B’Elanna nods, satisfied. 

The mess hall is dark and empty when they arrive, which is what they had been hoping for. They’d picked this time during the nightshift because it was the quietest and least likely to run into someone. Harry thinks it’s a bit eerie actually when he and B’Elanna step inside, the entire room bathed in the soft glow of the dim night lighting. 

B’Elanna only illuminates the kitchen area so they can see while they work. Harry immediately dives into searching the nearest cabinet, grimacing as he nudges some weird-looking bowl of fungus out of the way to peer into the back part of the shelf. 

“This isn’t exactly how I’d envisioned spending this night,” B’Elanna says as she shuffles a box of potatoes out of the way on a nearby shelving unit. “Sleep would have been a nice alternative.” 

Harry chuckles. “How do we always manage to get swayed into Tom’s schemes?” 

“I dunno,” B’Elanna answers. “Maybe we’re just masochists at heart, Starfleet.” 

The use of his nickname makes Harry try to hold back a smile. “Makes the most sense, Maquis,” he shoots back. 

His hand brushes against a bottle of cooking oil, tipping it precariously forwards, and Harry scrambles frantically for half a second to keep it from meeting an untimely end on the kitchen floor. A sigh of relief escapes his lips as the container safely resumes its previous upright position. He resolves to move more carefully as he continues because he doesn’t want Neelix to figure out someone had been snooping around. 

“Speaking of the Maquis,” he begins, a sudden thought occurring to him, “shouldn’t you all have a lot of experience in hiding stuff away and sneaking into places you shouldn’t be? Shouldn’t that help you be better at finding stuff?” 

He’d said that mostly as a joke, but B’Elanna straightens up from the barrel she was leaning over to scrutinize him intently for that random comment. 

“The way you phrased that makes it sound like we were just a ragtag group of adventurers on some sort of game of galactic scavenger hunt.” 

A haunted look briefly passes over her face, barely perceptible, and Harry immediately regrets accidentally dredging up old wounds. He knows the Maquis were fighting a war from the shadows, struggling to survive any way they could. 

He wonders how many people they lost along the way. 

Harry opens his mouth to apologize for the thoughtless comment—the atmosphere in the tiny kitchen now feels a bit stifling—but B’Elanna shakes her head as a smile slides back onto her face. She lets it go, knowing without words that he hadn’t meant it.

“I blame your Starfleet education for being misinformed about history,” she teases to lighten the mood, then turns her attention back to the vegetables in front of her. 

“Hey, you went to the Academy too,” he banters back. 

“Not as long as you though,” she points out with a laugh. Amazing how she could spin dropping out of Starfleet Academy as a positive here. 

Harry is about to come back with a witty comment, but at the same moment he opens up a whole box full of nothing but leola root. He grimaces and takes an involuntary step back. 

“Ugh,” is B’Elanna’s only reply as she glances over to see what had made him fall silent. 

“How’s it going in there?” Tom calls out to them from the doorway. 

“Nothing yet,” B’Elanna replies. 

Harry quickly chimes in with “not unless you want a whole box of ripe leola root just waiting to ruin a perfectly good meal.” He pauses for a moment and then jokingly adds, “hey, maybe you could just make some new wine out of leola root.” 

Even though the room is still relatively dark, Harry can clearly see the disgusted look Tom makes in response, as if Harry had suggested something ridiculously impossible like teaching Tuvok to perform a stand-up comedy routine. 

“It’s not here,” B’Elanna says, closing the last cabinet door. “Wherever he put it, it’s not here.” 

Harry has a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, not unlike the feeling he gets whenever actually consuming something with leola root in it. The quest for this bottle of wine might take a little longer than anticipated.

*** 

Somehow the Jefferies tube feels even smaller the second time around. 

Tom’s knee is pressing into the side of Harry’s thigh, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Tom is too busy trying to avoid B’Elanna’s elbows as she sends him a death glare that any Klingon warrior would have been proud of. 

“So if Neelix didn’t add the bottle to his collection in the kitchen, where would it be?” Harry asks. 

“Probably somewhere dumb like Cargo Bay 2,” B’Elanna scoffs.

All three of them suddenly pause to consider this possibility. 

“Do you think…?” Tom begins. 

“He certainly could have…” Harry chimes in. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised…” B’Elanna mutters darkly.

It was an open secret that all sorts of things had been stashed away in Cargo Bay 2 by just about every member of the crew. Harry isn’t quite sure how it started, but over the years, it wasn’t uncommon to find random things hidden around the room whenever someone would go get something out of storage. It was sort of an unspoken rule that you just left things where you found them. 

“How long do you think it would take to find it in there?” Harry asks. He realizes his foot has fallen asleep while in the cramped Jefferies tube, but he’s too afraid to shift positions and bump into B’Elanna.

“Between the three of us, hopefully not too long,” Tom replies. 

“I’ll have an infiltration plan for us in the next hour,” B’Elanna says with a particularly terrifying glint of excitement in her eyes.

Tom opens his mouth like he’s about to tell her they don’t really need another heist plan this time, but then he thinks better of it and says nothing. Harry thinks that’s wise because there’s not really enough room in the Jefferies tube for him to duck out of the way if B’Elanna gets mad. 

“This wine better be worth it,” Harry mutters.

*** 

Predictably, they have to make some changes to B’Elanna’s plan. After she started off with “we’ll need to bring out the hazmat gear,” both Tom and Harry said they’d just go with the less complicated option. 

That option being to simply walk into Cargo Bay 2 and search for the missing wine. Even if someone comes in, it won’t be suspicious-looking since they can claim they’re looking for just about anything stored in the large space. B’Elanna had looked a bit disappointed and had immediately chosen the far back corner of the room to begin her search without speaking to them. 

“I’ll make it up to her later with a new holodeck program or something,” Tom says before Harry can even verbalize his question about whether or not B’Elanna was okay. 

Harry opens up a large container to find it completely empty. “I just hope we find what we’re looking for.” 

“Me too,” Tom replies. 

Harry pushes a particularly large container out of the way to examine the one behind it, but his only discovery is a bundle of old scarves someone else had stashed away back there. He untangles the scarves but there’s nothing hidden there either other than questionable fashion choices. The patterns are gaudy and kind of make Harry’s eyes hurt just looking at them. He dumps them back to their original place with a sigh.

“Why’s this bottle so important anyway?” Harry asks. He takes a step back for a moment to decide which container he’s going to look through next. 

Tom smiles before he answers. “Well, it was our first year out here and I was feeling a bit homesick. I stockpiled a bunch of replicator rations for that bottle of wine and told myself I’d drink it on a special occasion.” He pauses for a moment to rifle through a box of salvaged ship parts before continuing. “I didn’t really have a lot of friends back then if you remember, so there wasn’t really anyone to share it with. In the end, I decided to hold onto it instead. Let it age a bit, and then maybe I’d have someone to celebrate with in the future.” 

Harry remembers those days, back when Tom didn’t seem to fit in with either the Starfleet crew or the Maquis. But it didn’t take him too long to start opening up to people, learning to live and work alongside each other. Harry himself had been drawn to Tom because he sort of understood that feeling of not quite fitting in. He had set off on his first Starfleet mission, essentially knowing nothing and no one, but Tom had been one of the first people to reach out. He appreciated that. 

So much had changed in the years since their encounter with the Caretaker. 

Harry almost says something poignant about the two of them becoming friends pretty early on in their journey, but he’s distracted by the contents of the next container he opens which reveals a skimpy set of lingerie. He absolutely did _not_ want to know who stashed that here.

“…that’s weird,” he mutters to himself before closing the container and pretending he hadn’t seen anything.

“There’s a lot of weird things in here,” Tom says with a grimace. “I think I might have uncovered some cursed mask over in one of those boxes by the wall. It’ll probably haunt my nightmares too.” 

Harry hears a thump and a muffled curse from B’Elanna over in the corner of the room, but she looks okay, just annoyed, as he glances over there. He returns his attention back to the container he’s searching through while Tom starts shuffling around some barrels nearby. 

That’s when the cargo bay door opens with a hiss and little Naomi Wildman darts inside. 

“You didn’t see me,” she declares as she easily squeezes herself down between a few nearby boxes, hiding herself from view as if she does this every day. (And she might, for all Harry knows, to be honest.) 

Harry exchanges confused glances with Tom and B’Elanna. 

“You hiding from someone?” Tom decides to ask the obvious question. 

“Shhh,” she shushes them, finger pressed to her lips. “I’m trying to win.” 

Before the conversation can continue further, the doors open again and Seven steps inside. She regards the three of them with a cool stare and a slightly raised eyebrow. Sometimes Seven has an uncanny knack for reading the situation when you least expect her to (which is always unrelentingly strange because most of the time she’s terrible at it), so Harry worries she may automatically just _know_ they’re searching for a bottle of wine Neelix stashed away. 

But instead, Seven’s only words are “Computer, locate Naomi Wildman.” 

“ _Naomi Wildman is in Cargo Bay 2_ ,” the computerized voice replies back with the same amount of emotion. 

Naomi immediately pops up from her hiding space with a disappointed pout on her face. “Seven, that’s _cheating_ ,” she says, aghast as if someone had just told her something truly devastating like she couldn’t have desserts for every meal. “That’s not how you play Hide and Seek!” 

Seven shows no remorse, turning her attention briefly away from the small child in her charge. “What are you three doing? Should we assist you?” she decides to ask Tom who is closest to the door. 

“We’ve got this covered, no worries,” he replies, nonchalantly waving away her concern. “Just looking for something I misplaced.” 

“I see,” Seven states tersely. 

For a nanosecond, Harry wonders what Tom will say when Seven inevitably asks what said lost item is, but Seven says something unexpected instead. 

“I’ve heard that what you’re looking for is always in the last place you look,” she says in the same kind of stiff tone she uses to deliver updates at staff meetings. “Because,” she continues, almost hesitantly, “after you find it, you stop looking.” 

There’s a stunned silence for a moment before Harry realizes she was attempting to make a joke and then he bursts out laughing. He’s not sure he’s ever heard Seven tell a joke before. 

“Oh, I get it,” Tom says, chuckling too. 

“Get better jokes, Seven,” B’Elanna calls out from the back of the room, but even she is smiling a bit. 

“The Doctor suggested I try to add some jokes into my conversations,” Seven explains.

“Grownups are weird,” Naomi declares, and then reaches out to grab Seven’s hand. “Let’s go to the holodeck now. We’re going to have a serious lesson on how to properly play Hide and Seek.” 

And then, just like the whirlwind Naomi entered in as, the two of them were gone. 

Tom is still chuckling. “I wonder what it’d be like to play Hide and Seek on a Borg Cube.” 

“Impossible,” B’Elanna says quickly. “Everything in there looks the damn same.” She pauses and then adds in frustration, “much like all the containers in this cargo bay…” 

She closes another box with more force than necessary just to emphasize her point. 

“As funny as it is to hear Seven try to tell jokes, this is starting to feel a bit like a lost cause,” Harry admits reluctantly. They were no closer to finding the wine bottle than when they started, and they’d covered almost the entire room already. 

Tom sighs, a look of disappointment souring his happy demeanor from a few minutes ago. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. But thanks for spending your free time trying to help me out though,” he continues. 

They go their separate ways not much longer after that, but the wine bottle remains on Harry’s mind for the rest of the night. 

Maybe there’s one last place to look.

*** 

“Neelix, you got a minute?” Harry leans against the counter in the mess hall, watching as the ship’s cook stirs a simmering pot of soup to serve later. It’s early so there aren’t many other crewmen around looking for breakfast yet. 

“Of course I do, Harry,” Neelix smiles. “What can I do for you? Special request for breakfast? I’ve been practicing lately on a classic Bolian delicacy you might be interested in trying.” 

“Thanks but not today,” Harry replies. He really had no desire to try any Bolian delicacies if he could help it. “Actually, I’m trying to help Tom with something…” 

Harry simply explains the whole situation, and hopes Neelix would agree to just return the wine bottle. It’s probably what they should have done to start with.

“Ah, yes, a little birdie told me you all were looking for something in Cargo Bay 2 yesterday,” Neelix says, eyes twinkling and thankfully not looking the least bit annoyed by the situation. 

“Did that ‘little birdie’ happen to be Naomi?”

He nods, chuckling. “After she told me, I just assumed that was probably what you all were looking for.” He gathers up some chopped vegetables and adds them to the soup. “Tom seemed reluctant to part with the bottle after our game the other day, so I really had intended on only keeping it for about a week or two and then returning it anyway. I’m more of a whiskey drinker myself, to be honest.” 

Harry laughs because they really could have avoided all the snooping around if they’d just simply asked first. He watches Neelix cross the kitchen and open up the container of leola root Harry remembers discovering with disgust the other night. 

Neelix pulls out the leola root box revealing a hidden compartment underneath. 

“ _That’s_ where you kept it?!” Harry exclaims before he can stop himself. 

“Of course,” Neelix grins. “Nobody ever looks past the leola root.” 

He places the wine bottle in Harry’s hands, and Harry resists the urge to cradle it like a baby. All that work for this one bottle of replicated Ktarian wine.

But at least the search is _finally_ over. 

*** 

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” B’Elanna says as the front of her shoe digs into Harry’s shin. He tries to readjust his position but he only manages to squash a few of Tom’s fingers. 

“Hey, watch it or I’ll accidentally spill some,” Tom chides them both as he pours wine into three glasses. The smell of the synthehol quickly fills the tiny enclosed space. 

In hindsight perhaps, deciding to drink Tom’s bottle of Ktarian wine in the Jefferies tube is not their best idea. But he’d insisted anyway just “for old time’s sake” (as if meeting in the bowels of Voyager was something they did on the regular and not just for this nonsensical wild goose chase.) 

“I propose a toast to Harry for finding the bottle,” Tom says, raising his glass and almost accidentally hitting the ceiling. “To B’Elanna for planning our strategy to get it back.” 

“You didn’t even _use_ any of my heist plans,” B’Elanna interjects like she’s offended, but she can’t hide her amused smile.

“And to myself for accidentally losing it in the first place, but in the process gave us an excuse to hang out together more for fun,” Tom continues, grinning smugly. 

“You’re the worst,” Harry jokes as they all clink their glasses together and sip the wine. “Oh, but this stuff is actually pretty good.” 

“I _told you_ it was worth it,” Tom replies. 

B’Elanna elbows Tom hard in the ribs, making the liquid swirl around in his glass dangerously close to spilling out. “Stop swelling your ego,” she teases. “We don’t have room in here for your big head.” 

Harry agrees because it’s so cramped his feet are starting to fall asleep. 

They bicker and banter like that as they continue to sip their wine, content to just spend time together even if it’s in a Jefferies tube like they’re a couple of children hanging out in a secret club fort. But Harry decides he doesn’t mind at all. 

“Seven was right, you know,” he says after a while. “The last place I looked was where I found the wine bottle.” 

“Technically, it was the first place we looked, but you missed it the first time,” B’Elanna said. 

“And technically, you weren’t even looking in the end. You just asked Neelix to give it back,” Tom adds. 

“Oh whatever, you know what I meant,” Harry waves away their criticism with a pout and takes another sip of his wine. 

Tom laughs at the look on his face, and B’Elanna joins in. And the laughter is contagious because Harry can’t stop himself from joining in a moment later, because the whole situation is ridiculous. But he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. 

The laughter fills up the tiny space, wrapping the three of them together.


End file.
